Russell Davies

pointless music

I've been on planes a lot recently, so I've been doing a lot of noodling with Ableton Live. The download below is a little piece I'm quite pleased with. It's not finished, it's a bit pointless and it doesn't really go anywhere, but I quite like the mood.

See what you think.

afterawalk.mp3 (About 4MB)

building a personal long-tail

So I realise that it's very easy to take any idea and say 'building a long-tail for X' and pretend you've got something better, but I think there's something in this.

Because I think a blog is like a personal long-tail. (And, obviously, if Chris Anderson has already said this, I apologise.)

But the great thing about a blog, or at least this one, for me, is that it's a great place to keep all the smaller, lower interest, everyday bits of your life and your thinking. I'm not posting my most important work here, or my deepest feelings. I'm posting the unconsidered trifles that occur to everyone everyday, that might turn into something, but which'll probably just blow away. And the great thing with the blog is that they just sit here until they come in handy. Or don't. And they're all searchable.

That's how I use it anyway. It's like a personal corporate archive, a searchable depository of little thoughts, quotes, images and ideas. (And it tells me that on August 25th 2003, I was almost stuck in a lift, which I wouldn't otherwise have remembered.)

And it's more than that, it's also a way of building value via accretion (how do you like that jargon?) by which I mean this:

Blogs are a tremendous way of starting things. Any little idea you have, you can start it off, in a very low effort, low key way. And maybe you'll never come back to it, but maybe you will and maybe you'll extend it and then maybe a year later, or whenever, you'll actually have achieved quite a lot. Without really meaning to.

You've built something interesting through the casual accretion of lots of tiny things, rather than the determined effort of one big thing.

Now, of course, if I got my tagging a bit better sorted out that 'personal corporate archive' could stretch across lots of things - Flickr, Backpack, plazes etc. which would be even more useful, and if that integrated with my desktop and spare hard-drives I'd be even more happy.

But anyway, welcome to my personal institutional memory. Enjoy your visit.

battle of the ad-blogs

Today is apparently the last day for voting in the battle of the ad-blogs. I obviously wanted to maintain an ironic distance about the whole thing but I must confess to being quite excited. And I'm very concerned that I'm going to be overhauled by Gareth and/or Fallon who've both been piling on the posts recently.

So if you've not voted, I'd be very grateful if you did.

frozen ashes and snow

Went to see the Ashes and Snow exhibition while in LA. In the Nomadic Museum.

The art was a bit ho hum. The artist made a very good decision to have his art in such a magnificent building because otherwise it would have looked quite a lot like new age hotel art. If architecture is frozen music then this art is frozen Deep Forest. Big, monumental, ponderously full of staged significance. You can imagine a BP logo in the corner.

The building though is fantastic.

A cathedral of cardboard and shipping containers. It’s all cheap, everyday materials but the scale and proportions make it beautiful and lovely. Too big for me to get decent pictures but you can see some here. It’s grand and intriguing on the outside and mysterious and calm on the inside. Very like a cathedral.

audio interviews

Piers was asking if I could do audio versions of the video interviews - so he could listen on his nano at the gym. (Doesn't that paint a picture of a lifestyle?)

So here are mp3s of the interviews with Stefan and Dylan.

sometimes this is just how you feel

this made me feel slightly cool

StoryCorps

StoryCorps is a fantastic idea. People interviewing each other as a way of collecting oral history. Of course being a planner I'm instantly thinking - what a great way to do research. Particularly as everything's better when you put it in an airstream.

4th assignment - visiting professor

We have a new approach for the Account Planning School of the Web this time.

The splendid Grant McCracken has kindly agreed to be a visiting professor. I've asked him because:

1. He's smart and interesting.
2. I thought he'd set the kind of problem that would never occur to me (and he has)
3. He's been on Oprah.
4. You're probably getting bored of me by now (or at least have started to work out what I like, so this'll keep you on your toes)
5. I thought it'd be easier for me.

Grant posted his original thoughts on the assignment here (He even included a suggested reading list). Siince then we've been lazily exchanging emails to clarify the parameters of the task.

So here's the task as I understand it (Grant - chime in if I've missed anything).

Lifestyle Construction.

The task is "building a lifestyle." By "lifestyle" I mean the characteristic choices from media and material culture that a group of consumers uses to define itself and the world. I cast the net wide to include: the Rat Pack, Preps (in the 1980s), Sloan Street Rangers, Geeks, Chaps (see the website www.thechap.net), Mods, Rockers, Skinheads, Hippies, the New Georgians, and so on. You get the idea. (See the bibliography below for supporting documents and other suggestions.)

The Rat pack life style includes characteristic choices in how to conduct oneself in public (fist fights OK), a style of language (lots of beatnik talk), highly characteristic dress (styling suits with thin labels and ties), a defining way of thinking about and treating women, a very particular view of maleness, a very particular view of the world (self advertising mixed with deep solidarity, splashy, public, brawling) and so on. (How particular was this lifestyle versus other lifestyles of the postwar period? Try to imagine Cary Grant as a Rat Pack member, or any of the Rat pack guys as Cary Grant.)

I want APSW students to design a lifestyle from the ground up, specifying favorite music, films, novels, style of dress, home furnishing, style of speech and so on. Make it cohere in some ways. Make it inconsisent in other. Build in some contradictions. It is the latter two, as much as the first, that make a lifestyle live.

That's all a quote from Grant's post. Does that make sense? That's what you have to do. You have to construct an imaginary lifestyle segment. Give it a name. Imagine what brands they listen to. What movies they watch. What books they read. What condiments they favour. Whatever. Grant originally wanted to add some geographic criteria but I persuaded him that was too onerous. We are agreed though that you can't just create some youth or teen lifestyle. That's too easy. This has got to be a proper grown-up lifestyle choice, not a youth fad.

Is that all clear?

I have to say, I think this is a fantastic task. It's something I'd never have thought of. I think Grant will give you really thoughtful critiques, it'll stretch your brains mightily and - if you ever want to be a futurist - it'll be great practise. They seem to spend their whole lifes making up fake lifestyles.

The specific requirements.

1. You have to give your lifestyle a pithy, catchy name (the kind of thing you could imagine journalists ripping off.)

2. You have to write a 20 word capsule summary of your imaginary lifestyle.

3. You have 1,000 more words to describe the whole lifestyle and the array of choices your lifestylees make. (You are allowed, nay, encouraged, to write less.)

4. You may use pictures - but your document can't be bigger than 2MB. It must be a Word or Powerpoint file.

5. Email your answers to me, not Grant, I'm going to compile them all for him. (russell at russelldavies.com.)

6. The deadline is midnight (GMT) Feb 28th.

How does that sound? Exciting? I think so. I'm hugely grateful to Grant but I must confess to some nervousness, I want y'all to show him how great you are. Please, do me proud. And spend some time with Grant's blog. It'll be worth it.

That is all.

it says nothing

I'm fairly tolerant of silly beliefs. Well, I'm not tolerant, but I'm normally too lazy to get indignant. But this book takes the cake. Or the biscuit. Or something. It doesn't just posit one obviously untrue thing - astrology - but it combines it with another - the idea that days have colours and this somehow has something to do with who you are. Incredible.

I actually looked the at colorstrology website just to check this wasn't all a joke. I discovered very oppresive use of flash animation and some choice mumbo-jumbo, but I also realised that the whole thing is sponsored by Pantone. (They alert you to this fact on the launch page and warn you that the content on the site 'is for entertainment purposes only'. So don't base your life on your birth colour and then sue them when it doesn't work out.)

You could see why they'd think this book would be a clever idea - except it makes them look like completely vapid new age idiots, rather than smart colour theorists.

Personally I will be buying my colours from someone else from now on.

(And I'm still not entirely convinced it's not an elaborate hoax.)

Strangely all the pages I flicked through listed only positive qualities. But presumably there must be some in there that say something like - Dirty Grey - Slow. Ugly. Weak. Otherwise the world would be full of only splendid, persistent people.

(By the way, aren't digital cameras marvelous? Once upon a time I would have to have bought this book in order to make fun of it. Not any more).

Mind you. Don't these things rather remind you of a typical brand values statement? There's the same limited universe of positive attributes, which end up signifying not much.